A young man sees a beautiful young girl. She has perfect looks, figure, stride, smile, skin-tone, dress sense etc. He is totally enamoured and falls for her head over-heels. He smiles at her and she smiles back with a ‘hi’. Encouraged, he proposes a cup of coffee. She follows him. Once seated in a cozy corner table comfortably, he orders coffee, but she refuses, saying that she is not ‘programmed’ for drinking coffee. Astonished, he throws a hard look at her and gets the shock of his life as he realises that the ‘girl’ he has fallen for is actually a humanoid robot!
It may sound like science fiction, but it can actually be a real-life situation, sooner or later. The case in point is Sophia, a social humanoid robot. Gone are the days when a robot looked like a machine. Our general perception of a robot is that it may have a torso or limbs but it is still a mechanical device with nuts and bolts, used for carrying out difficult pre-programmed operations. But with mind blowing advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, things are changing so fast that at times it is difficult to keep up with the changes. Many engineers and scientists worldwide are now busy creating humanoid robots. Quite a few are already walking the Earth. A humanoid resembles a human being, in characteristics or form, without actually being one. This term, unfortunately, was used earlier by the European colonists to refer to the natives.
The way machines or artificial intelligence is developing, the line distinguishing it from human intelligence is getting increasingly thinner and the days are probably not very far when the demarcation will totally get blurred. Forget the highest level of AI used in high- tech operations like the space sciences; even our mundane day-to-day lives are getting overwhelmingly swamped by AI or machine intelligence without us actually realising it. You open the smartphone to write a text; you are virtually dictated by it on spelling and what words to write next. If you are a regular listener of music on YouTube, the moment you open the app, songs and videos of your liking will be on display. Google or Facebook knows all your likes and dislikes, recognises your friends and are privy to many secrets too! Smart chat-bot devices like Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri etc., virtually obey all your verbal instructions like a servant, recognises your voice command and can even chat with you. A smart light bulb can be controlled through a smartphone. On your way back from work, you can switch on the home AC, geyser or electric kettle. The list is increasingly getting endless by the day.
A Hong Kong-based company, Hanson Robotics, created Sophia, the humanoid robot in 2016. Modelled after yesteryear Hollywood classic beauty, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia is able to display 50-odd diverse human facial expressions matching her verbal communication. She has a petite and elegant appearance with long fluttery eyelashes, expressive brown eyes, a slender nose, high cheek bones, porcelain skin and always wears an intriguing smile. Sophia’s ‘speaking’ software is like that of a chat-bot, programmed to respond to many specific questions that may create an impression that she understands conversations. But in reality, the necessary information is shared in a cloud network with block-chain technology.
With mini cameras installed inside her beautiful eyes, combined with computer algorithms, Sophia can see, recognize faces and maintain eye contact. Latest AI backed visual data processing technology helps her imitate human gestures and facial expressions. With all these near perfect humanlike attributes, Sophia became the world’s first robot to receive citizenship of a country. Saudi Arabia conferred her with the honor in October 2017. She has been moving around the world, including Mumbai, Hyderabad, etc., making audiences spellbound with her interviews. Encouraged, Hanson has already created a few male and female ‘siblings’ for Sophia. An equally beautiful female humanoid with long flowing hair has been created in Japan recently. With all these unimaginable advancements in AI and robotics, where the world is heading towards is anybody’s guess. But as someone cynically commented – AI will never ever be able to match human stupidity!
